Azerbaijan to invest up to $20 bln in Turkish economy – Azerbaijani president

Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdogan

BAKU, April 04. /ITAR-TASS/. Azerbaijan plans to invest about $20 billion into the Turkish economy in the next 7 to 8 years, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said on Friday after his talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“It will be Azerbaijan’s biggest investments abroad,” Aliyev told a news conference, adding that the two countries had a number of energy projects that “have gone beyond regional boundaries to gain a global scale.” “The projects Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum and the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) have changed the energy map of the world,” he stressed.

The Azerbaijani president also noted “good possibilities and prospects” for military cooperation between the two countries.

The Turkish prime minister, in turn, noted that “Azerbaijan sets big goals” in terms of investments in Turkey. According to Erdogan, trade turnover between the two countries was nearing $15 billion.

Touching on the construction of the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline, the Turkish prime minister said that major steps to implement this project aiming to pump Azerbaijani gas to the Turkish and European markets would be taken in the forthcoming months. “I am confident this international project to be completed in 2018 will only strengthen our brotherhood,” he said.